


Winter's End

by TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel



Series: Secret Superwoman [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America: Winter Soldier (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/M, Superpowers, The Winter Soldier - Freeform, no Cap 2 spoilers except for Winter Soldier's identity, not Cap2 compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 09:11:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1545428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel/pseuds/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just an ordinary day when someone tries to shoot Darcy Lewis in the head. It's a good thing she's invulnerable to bullets.</p><p>[NOT compliant with the Captain America: The Winter Soldier movie]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter's End

**Chapter One**

Darcy is on her way to the nearest Starbucks when something collides with the side of her head. Unlike most things, the collision actually _hurts_.

“Ow!” Darcy immediately claps a hand to the side of her head, and feels something small and hard there. She pulls it out of her hair and stares at it where it sits in the palm of her hand. It’s a piece of metal, small and hot and misshapen, and Darcy has a nasty feeling that she’s looking at a bullet.

She looks up again, eyes scanning the skyline this time, then looks lower, focuses until she can see everything in crystal-clear detail. There’s an open window several floors up on a building some distance away, and as Darcy watches, a long-range rifle and sniper scope disappear from view.

It’s been only seconds since the bullet was fired, and Darcy isn’t sure what to do. If she were dressed as Superwoman, she’d go after this guy, but as it is, she’s wearing jeans and a sweater, her face clear for the world to see, and she feels horribly exposed. Darcy glances around, looking for some clue what to do next, and her eyes land on a phone booth about a dozen feet away.

“ _No_ ,” Darcy tells herself, but glances back at the open window. Whoever shot at her is probably already escaping. “Aw, dammit.”

Her Superwoman costume is in her bag, and this is a _bad_ idea, but letting the shooter get away is probably a worse one.

Darcy turns and sprints for the phone booth, moving faster than the eye can track. Still moving at super-speed, she whips off her jeans and sweater and flings on the Superwoman costume, and hopes like hell that no one is watching. She’s never tried to pull the Clark Kent phonebox thing before, and dressing at super-speed is surprisingly hard: Darcy has less co-ordination than you’d think, for a super-powered alien. But seconds later she’s wearing her blue shirt, red skirt, blue tights, red boots combo with her mask securely on, and grabs her bag and takes to the sky.

She shoots through the open window just in time to get a glimpse of a guy with long hair and a shiny metal arm leaving the room. She takes off after him, and he spins around, already raising a gun in her direction. Darcy simply bats it away, and it flies out of his hands and hits the wall. The guy tries to punch her then, with the metal arm, but Darcy simply catches his fist with her hand.

“Who are you?” she demands, and the guy glares at her, his hair hanging lankly around his face. Darcy blinks and frowns, because there’s something hella familiar about him, even if the overuse of eyeliner is making it hard to place him. “Why’d you shoot me?”

The guy tries to pull free, but Darcy tightens her grip, and the metal arm screeches. The guy stops trying to pull free abruptly, and gives her an incredulous look. Somehow, it’s that look that makes it click for Darcy, and she knows where she’s seen that face before.

“Holy fucking shit on a stick,” Darcy breathes, going still. “Bucky Barnes?”

Bucky’s face contorts in confusion, which is probably a bad sign.

“Who the hell is Bucky Barnes?” he asks, and that’s enough for Darcy: Bucky Barnes or not, this guy tried to kill her, and he clearly isn’t the guy Steve used to know. Pulling back her free hand, Darcy punches him just hard enough to knock out a normal person. Bucky goes down with all the grace and dignity of a sack of potatoes.

Darcy stares down at him, feeling utterly lost and shaken. First someone’s trying to kill her, and then it turns out to be Steve’s long-dead best friend? Something’s seriously messed up here.

“This is so above my pay-grade,” Darcy mutters. She grabs the back of Bucky’s vest experimentally and lifts: the vest takes Bucky’s weight without tearing or anything, so Darcy lifts him into the air and walks back to the open window, and takes flight.

Her next clue that something weird is going on here happens when halfway to the Avengers Tower – screw SHIELD, if Bucky Barnes is somehow alive and well and shooting people, the Avengers get first crack at dealing with it – Bucky regains consciousness and starts struggling to get free, when a normal person would still be out cold. Since they’re like twenty feet up, Darcy tightens her grip and tries not to drop him.

“Hey, asshole, if you want to get splattered all over the pavement, keep trying to get free,” Darcy yells down at him, and he glances up, startled, before looking down and seeing the long distance between him and the ground. He hesitates, and stops struggling. He’s glaring, though, which probably means he’ll try and attack Darcy the moment they touch down. _Joy._

Sure enough, as soon as Bucky’s feet hit the ground he tries to turn and lunge for Darcy despite the grip she still has on the back of his vest, metal arm outstretched, and there’s a moment that would be vaguely hilarious if it weren’t so serious, where Bucky is flailing and trying to grab Darcy, while she clocks him again. Bucky hits the floor a second time, and Darcy sighs. Laying Bucky out so that he’s lying on his back instead of sprawled awkwardly, Darcy grabs the back of his vest again and drags him into the penthouse.

She can’t see anyone else around.

“JARVIS, are any of the other Avengers at home?” she asks aloud.

“Sir is in his workshop with Dr Banner, while Agent Barton and Mr Odinsson are in the lounge, playing Mario Kart,” JARVIS replies. “Agent Romanov is in her quarters.”

“And Steve?” Darcy questions, bracing herself.

“Captain Rogers is currently out, Miss Lewis.”

Darcy isn’t sure whether to be relieved about that or not. Steve has to know sooner or later, but hey, on the plus side, at least Darcy doesn’t yet have to try and explain something she doesn’t even understand herself.

“Okay, well, can you ask the others to come up here?” Darcy requests. “Tell them it’s a team meeting, status urgent.”

“Should I send a message to Captain Rogers?” JARVIS asks. Darcy thinks about it for a second, and shakes her head.

“Not until I have a better idea of what’s going on,” she tells JARVIS. “This could devastate him, if this guy is who I think it is.”

“Very well, Miss Lewis,” JARVIS says, and goes silent.

Darcy drags Bucky over to the floor by one of the chairs, and sits down to wait. Tony and Bruce are the first to arrive on the scene, to her surprise: normally they get all caught up in doing science and have to be dragged out (sometimes literally).

“What’s up, Lewis,” Tony says, and his eyes fall on Bucky. “Also, why is there an unconscious man with a haircut issue unconscious on my floor?”

“Who is he?” Bruce asks, frowning. “Is his arm metal?”

“Yes it is, and Tony don’t even think about walking over here for a better look, the guy’s dangerous,” Darcy replies. “He’s here because he tried to kill me, and his name is James Buchanan Barnes.”

She has the satisfaction of seeing Tony do a double-take.

“Wait, when you say James Buchanan Barnes, you mean–”

“Bucky Barnes,” Darcy confirms.

“How the hell is that possible?” Tony asks, looking as bewildered as Darcy feels.

“Dude, I have no clue, and I’m hoping we can find out before I have to break the news to Steve,” Darcy responds.

“Uh, I’m clearly missing something here,” Bruce breaks in. “Who’s Bucky Barnes?”

Darcy and Tony both stare at him. Bruce stares back.

“What?”

“Sergeant James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes,” Darcy rattles off. “Best friend of Captain America from childhood, one of the Howling Commandos, an elite special unit formed during WWII to assist the efforts of Captain America and the SSR during WWII. Believed to have been killed in action during a classified mission in 1945, only shortly before the end of the war. Except that it looks like history got it wrong.” She nudges Bucky’s unconscious body with the toe of one boot. He doesn’t stir.

“You know, in all the photos I saw of him, he had a lot less hair,” Tony offers, into the silence.

It’s at this point that Thor, Clint, and Natasha all arrive in the elevator.

“What’s going on?” Natasha asks, and goes still as she sees Bucky. “Why is the Winter Soldier lying on the floor?”

“ _What?_ ” Clint yelps, taking a step back.

“You know him?” Darcy demands. Natasha walks cautiously forward, and stares down at the unconscious man.

“He was one of the men who trained me,” she says, after a moment. Her face is a blank mask, and not for the first time, Darcy wonders what’s going on beneath it. “He’s a notorious assassin who was used by the Red Room during the Cold War.”

“Wait, Bucky Barnes trained you?” Tony says. Natasha looks at him.

“I don’t know who Bucky Barnes is,” she says, “but he did.” She tips her head in Bucky’s direction. “Everyone in the Red Room knew about him. He was their crowning achievement. They used to keep him in cryo in between missions, sometimes for years, even decades at a time.” She looks at Darcy. “How do _you_ know him?”

“See that face?” Darcy points. “That is the face of James Buchanan Barnes, Bucky to his friends, the most well-known of which happens to be Steve. He supposedly died in 1945.”

“You’re serious,” Clint says skeptically. Darcy glares at him.

“You think I’m kidding about this?” she asks, and Clint holds his hands up in surrender.

“You are certain that he is Steve’s friend?” Thor asks, frowning.

“Pretty certain,” Darcy replies. “I mean, it’s definitely his face, although I guess he could be a clone or something. Although if he’s been getting shoved in cryo for decades –”

“They used to call him the American,” says Natasha. Her voice is eerily calm. “There were rumours that he was a captured American soldier, subjected to the Red Room’s most effective brain-washing techniques. But the Red Room’s been gone for years. I made sure of it.”

“Okay, hold up,” Tony says, holding up a hand. “Let’s try and put this in order, okay? 1945, he’s killed in action during a classified mission.”

“He fell from a train in the Alps,” Darcy interjects, because Steve’s talked to her about Bucky before, about his guilt in being unable to save his best friend. “They never found the body.”

“So maybe the Russians found him,” Bruce suggests. “And that’s how he ended up with the Red Room.”

“Right,” Tony agrees. “There, they brain-wash him, and turn him into, what did you call him?”

“The Winter Soldier,” Natasha supplies.

“Uh-huh. So, he becomes the Winter Soldier, works for the Red Room, is cryogenically frozen when they don’t need him, although how he survived _that_ procedure, I don’t know. So what happened between the end of the Red Room and him trying to kill Darcy?”

“He tried to kill you?” Natasha asks sharply. Darcy nods.

“Shot me in the head.” She sees how everyone reacts to that. “But I’m okay!” she adds hastily. “I mean, it hurt, but the bullet basically bounced off the side of my skull. He took off, like, as soon as it didn’t work, but you know how fast I am.”

“Why would he shoot Darcy?” Clint asks, looking worried.

Natasha shrugs, her eyes intent and thoughtful.

“Out of all of us, she’s probably the hardest to kill,” she says. “Take Superwoman out of the picture, and all of the other Avengers are much easier to kill. Maybe that’s why.” She glances back at Darcy. “Did you know you’re invulnerable to bullets?”

“Hell no.” Darcy shakes her head. “It’s not like anyone’s ever shot me before.”

“So, what do we do now?” Tony asks. “I mean, I assume there’s a reason he isn’t at SHIELD –”

“He’s Steve’s best friend,” Darcy explains. “They grew up together and everything. I figure that makes him our problem to solve. Besides, SHIELD will probably just disappear him or something.”

“There might not be anything we can do for him,” Bruce offers hesitantly. “If he’s been brain-washed for decades–”

Thor clears his throat.

“There may yet be a way,” he says, and everyone looks at him expectantly.

It’s at this point that Bucky leaps to his feet, and lunges for Natasha.


End file.
